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‘Night Mayor’ promotes peace between day and night interests

A few steps outside Kate Eisen’s gallery on Queen St. W., there’s the first splatter of puke. Several more colour the concrete on her stroll to the coffee shop. They’re spaced out by broken glass, shattered flower pots and splotches of blood.

“I come to open the store and I’m scared of what I’ll find,” Eisen said. “It’s a disaster.”

The concept of the 'Night Mayor," which was born in Amsterdam, seeks to reconcile the behaviour of rowdy night revellers with those who live and work in nocturnal hotspots. (Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star)

The complaint is as old as urban life: rowdy revellers of the night irk the day-dwellers of nocturnal hotspots. But there may now be a solution, one spawned in party-hard Amsterdam that is breaching the eastern horizon for the world to behold.

The dawn of the “Night Mayor.”

The idea is simple: establish a municipal office — sometimes official, sometimes just sanctioned — to promote the twin goals of partier-resident co-existence and a vibrant, economically fruitful night life.

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Iterations of the “night mayor” have emerged in Zurich and Paris, while London became the latest city to study the idea when it launched a Night Time Commission last month. The “night mayor,” as the position was cheekily dubbed in the Dutch capital, is meant to be a bridge between the strait-laced bureaucracy of the day and the interests, both fiscal and fun, of what’s sometimes called “the other nine to five.”

Kate Eisen often shows up to her Queen St West shop to find numerous piles of puke on her doorstep. She wants to find a balance between the goings-on of night people and day dwellers. (Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star)

Amsterdam’s chief magistrate of darkness hosted an international summit for night mayors on April 22 and offered full-throated encouragement for Toronto to set up an office of its own.

“Cities are really different, but they all want the same thing,” said Mirik Milan, 35, who runs a “night mayor” NGO in Amsterdam that gets half its funding from the city. “I think it’s just important that people see the value of the night.”

There’s a paucity of data on the dollars circulating in Toronto’s “night time economy” (NTE), but studies in other cities suggest it could be significant. In Sydney, Australia, the commerce of night was estimated in 2013 at $15 billion, while in the entire United Kingdom — population: 65 million — the NTE was valued last year at $129 billion.

Milan, who calls himself a “rebel in a suit,” said the language of economic value is the main way to promote the interests of the night. This has allowed him to push for longer hours at nightclubs and bars — including the creation of eight 24-hour licences for establishments in various parts of the city, which he considers his greatest accomplishment.

He said they can kickstart development in certain areas and create more opportunity for the nocturnal class of entrepreneurs: DJs, promoters, graphic designers, musicians, dancers and the like.

The other side of his work aims to strike a balance between peace and quiet and a lively night. Milan said that longer hours can help in this regard by allowing people to trickle out of clubs on their own schedule, rather than being emitted en masse into the street at the same time. He’s also launched a pilot project in Rembrandtplein, a frenetic city square where 20 “square hosts” walk around reminding people to respect nearby residents, avoid yelling, not drink on the street and use a toilet.

Mirik Milan runs a “night mayor” NGO in Amsterdam that gets half its funding from the city. (Mirik Milan)

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“This is a method to innovate your city and the city’s night life,” Milan said. “The night life gives you opportunities.”

Jim Peters, president of the Responsible Hospitality Institute, a night-life economy consultant group, said the idea of cities appointing or working with someone like Milan has been emerging in the past decade or so. Cities should see the promotion of a healthy, active night life as a way to attract young, creative workers, said Peters, especially in the post-industrial era of many Western metropoles.

But Peters also points to conflicts that can be sparked by a heightened night life. Toronto is a good example, he said, with the influx of heavy condo development into the downtown entertainment district in recent years.

“Cities are being challenged by it, and therefore there’s a push to try and fix the problems where there wasn’t good planning around night life,” he said.

Mike Layton, councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina, said he thinks the city has done a “pretty good job” promoting the night-time economy, pointing to the music sector growth strategy and initiatives to keep bars open for longer hours during celebrations such as TIFF and NXNE. Toronto could do better by providing more transit consistently through the night, which could help clear the streets and avoid noise, Layton said.

The Night Mayor would promote the twin goals of partier-resident co-existence and a vibrant, economically fruitful night life. (Carlos Osorio)

Councillor Joe Cressy, who represents the neighbouring entertainment district, echoed Layton in saying the city supports night-time businesses even if there’s no explicit, catch-all policy or office in place to do so. The job of smoothing resident-partier conflicts, for instance, falls to downtown councillors, he said, describing how he frequently mediates discussions with condo associations and nearby bars and restaurants.

“In downtown Toronto, it is a vision for people where they live, where they work and where they play,” he said.

But not all night-time business owners feel the love from the municipal government. Zark Fatah, who runs several restaurants and bars along King St. W., said some city bylaws, such as restrictions on the size of patios and their proximity to residences “are almost counterintuitive to the idea of making money.” The city, he said, should do more to help night-time businesses thrive as more and more people move downtown to live.

At the same time, Eisen, who lives part of the time above her store on Queen St. W., said she’d like to see more police patrolling the streets at night to prevent vandalism and tomfoolery.

Both, however, would love to have a night mayor to call with their problems.

“It’s not a city for just anybody to do whatever they want,” Eisen said. “It has to have a balance.”

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